Ragnar Hartmann

Disjointed

Reviewed: 10-06-23

The author was suffering Covid brain while writing this, and while he’d normally make the ideas and characters fun, it did not come together in this one.

The rare time anything surprised me, I had no concern for the characters anyways. And all of the end twists were quite obvious from the opening. The main character never even lives up to the title.

It felt like Scalzi did an outline of The Hero’s Journey, and someone else filled in the blanks formulaically for the types of things they’d expect him to do.

That said, it’s not terrible, just mediocre when we expect more from this author.

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1 person found this helpful

Such an Improvement!

Reviewed: 04-29-22

Indira Varma brings the characters to life. Previous recordings of the witches serious, was to me like nails on chalkboards with a screechy man's voice applied to Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg (who isn't in this book, but still). The improvement is fabulous.
That said, there’s slight volume leveling issues in the first chapter of this book.

Peter Serafinowicz and Bill Nighy are of course perfect when they show up. To me Death has never been scary before, but wow, just wow!

Finally I'll admit the story is not my favorite Discworld novel. It's not bad, but it is mediocre. It doesn't unlock potential the way so many others do, as evidenced by the main character not showing up again for for 35 books (and then said book gets classified as part of the For Kids rather than as part of the Witches series).

If not a die hard fan, I suggest skipping to Wyrd Sisters. Indira Varma's narration will give that book the justice it has long been denied.

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7 people found this helpful

What Discworld Deserves

Reviewed: 04-28-22

Small Gods is my second favorite Discworld novel (after Guards! Guards!). So I’m biased.

The previous recording was a nice effort, but was distracting with the silly numb voice applied to the main character (one used on too many characters across these books I might add). Whereas Andy Serkis is a master, pulling me into the book in a way I never had been; and while he uses inflection to differentiate the character, it’s done with great care and respect, subtly adding another dimension to them. Bill Nighy and Peter Serafinowicz perfectly compliment him, without their bits ever feeling disjointed.

As for the story: this is the perfect introduction to Discworld. Better yet it’s stand alone. There are philosophical musings within it that I’ve quoted at university. The end is beautiful and forgiving (I won’t say more to avoid spoiling anything).

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11 people found this helpful

Bone chilling and fun!

Reviewed: 03-08-22

The good:
Decent cast of characters with conflicting motivations. Great cast. Music interludes.

The bad:
Too short.

The ugly:
No idea when the sequel will come out.

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Mediocre

Reviewed: 03-27-21

I loved the first story, and appreciate the dolphin bad review humor and “most danger meal deal” offered by KFC, but something felt a flat with the conclusion making me not overly curious about any more stories in this series.

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Vigilant Anti-Dolphin Hate Mongering!

Reviewed: 03-26-21

I'm offended, I'm offended, I'm super offended, this was offensive!

Tom Stranger refers to aquatic mammals as "flippant," and implies they are not meticulous about paying their insurance premiums or filling out their claim paperwork on time.

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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Reviewed: 11-20-20

The Good:
Shad Brooks effectively introduces us to a fantasy world that is not Tolkien fan-fic. I repeat, this novel is a fantasy novel that does not even resemble Lord of the Rings fan fiction! The attention to detail on the world building will blow you away. I just wish there could be a chapter devoted to hunting sky-whales (a creature which spends its entire life continually falling and eating other falling stuff).

The characters are varied, with competing motivations causing most of the conflicts. It feels like almost any of them could be the protagonist in a novel, however, within this narrative some are reduced to set pieces. A positive note is while the book is not comedy, characters have senses of humor; enough of this in fact that a joke which begins in the introduction makes encores becoming more funny each time.

The magic systems (plural!) are thought out in depth, and never excused away as just 'he magiced it.' As an example, Arch-Knights can enhance their physical abilities for a variety of effects, and learning to control it entails various embarrassing moments contributing to different ones solving the same problems in different ways (just getting to the roof of a building, one sticks to the wall to climb, another does a super strength jump, and another decreases his weight to float up).

The narrators of course do a fine job. The book sample does no justice to how good they are once the novel builds momentum.

The Bad:
So what I said above about magic systems... There ends up being a slight flaw in a Lit-RPG-esqe numbers assigned by the narrator's inner monologue. The main character being an engineer this can be excused, and it does help flush out details on limitations, but it is still skating on thin ice (don't worry, he never starts counting experience points or any of that B.S.).

The Ugly:
The main character is impossible to like, and worse keeps being a complete dolt about simple things when he's supposed to be highly intelligent. There's an in story reason for it, and in the style of narration there's a reason it's not explicitly spelled out, but I literally facepalmed several times!

The end felt rushed. It was however a good developmental place with regards to the characters for this story to leave off.

UPDATE:
With all the detail on things like the protagonist's sword being a different shape than a sword would be made of traditional material (magic swords in this setting are not just normal swords blessed by a wizard, they are made very differently...), so pictures would be amazing... And on that note, Mike S. Miller is working on adapting it into a four-part graphic novel! Should be out sometime around June 2021.

And the next book in this series is not expected until 2023 at the earliest. The author is writing an unrelated medieval fantasy book first (no, this one is not medieval; renaissance maybe?).

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A slow start

Reviewed: 03-11-20

This inspired some great games, and recently a Netflix show. In terms of story, it feels like act 1 of a larger story. Sadly not that much happens within it, and there is certainly no real conclusion just some foreshadowing.

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James Marsters

Reviewed: 05-25-19

The vocal range on the guy never ceases to amaze me... Oh and great introduction to a world of magic, especially that it did not do it as an origin story.

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Lackluster Finish

Reviewed: 12-24-18

had I not been invested from the previous two books, I would have given up. I suspect ODC did give up while writing this, and rushed a conclusion with a truly minimal about if extrapolation.

For a series about time shapers, it lost track of impacts and had the characters stealing money from their ancestor, without any evidence shown of how that could randomize the population (when on another character that was spelled out in great detail... change when two people hook up, and a different baby will be born).

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